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Friday, 16 August 2013

...argues a certain digital anthropology pundit, published in the FT today. Text follows...

Peter Cochrane, former head of technology for BT, maintains that our digital data will be collected whether we like it or not (“Spy bin ban highlights lure of big data”, FT August 14).He is wrong to suggest that we can simply extrapolate into the future what we experience now. It is also profoundly depressing to think that technology has an autonomous logic whose implications we should resign ourselves to. Technology, including big data, is what we make of it.

We have the power to create behavioural and legal frameworks to decide that features are harmful and constrain their impacts. In any event, these features are developed and exploited by people, companies and, in the case of the Prism spy programme, governments. These features are not inevitable or necessarily a sign of progress.

Let me illustrate with a historical example, for which I am indebted to internet theorist Evgeny Morozov, of where inevitablists who excused negative externalities in the name of technological progress were confronted.

In the early 20th century, champions of industrialisation maintained that a noisy living environment, where the din of machinery and motorised transport intrudes, was a necessary penalty of enjoying the benefits of progress. We should simply adapt to the new normal. However, noise abatement movements arose in opposition and inspired the noise pollution regulations that balance our interests today.

I notice that Peter's current title is futurologist but I hope that his version of the future, where noisy robots rule the earth unchecked, does not prevail. In my version we continue to have agency vis a vis our tools and some peace and quiet.